In a Software Defined Networking environment, one or more centralized controllers remotely program nodes, such as OpenFlow™ enabled switches, to establish dataplane connectivity. Because as little control logic as possible is typically embedded in the switches, the switches are unable to establish dataplane connectivity without supervision of the controllers. The controllers, however, need some means to communicate with the switches in order to program them, but they cannot rely on the presence of normal dataplane connectivity.
Often, either a Dedicated Control Plane Network or hybrid switches are used to provide dataplane connectivity in such networks. A Dedicated Control Plane Network requires building an additional physical control plane network that connects controllers and controlled switches. The connectivity for the control plane network is often provided by running traditional routing protocols. Such networks result in additional network equipment costs, management costs of the additional equipment and related software, and a possibility that the additional elements can fail. Hybrid switches are a hybrid of OpenFlow™ enabled switches and legacy switches that run traditional distributed routing software. The traditional routing software is configured to provide logical control plane connectivity over the shared data plane network. However, this requires that the switches embed the logic necessary to implement traditional routing protocols. The traditional routing protocols can pose constraints over the system design. For example they can limit the scalability and size of the physical data plane topology. The traditional routing protocols also have a management cost. Moreover, the interaction of the traditional routing protocols and OpenFlow™ can create additional technical challenges.